Turning point for jihadists?

Al-Zarqawi's death may mark a change in al-Qaida movement.

Al-Zarqawi's death may mark a change in al-Qaida movement.

June 10, 2006|CRAIG WHITLOCK The Washington Post

BERLIN -- The death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi could mark a turning point for al-Qaida and the global jihadist movement, according to terrorism analysts and intelligence officials. Until he was killed Wednesday by U.S. forces, the Jordanian-born guerrilla served as Osama bin Laden's proxy in Iraq, attracting hundreds if not thousands of foreign fighters under the al-Qaida banner. At the same time, al-Zarqawi had grown into a strategic headache for al-Qaida's founders by demonstrating an independent streak often at odds with their goals. Despite written pleas from bin Laden's deputy to change his tactics, al-Zarqawi alienated allies in the Iraqi insurgency as well as the Arab public by killing hundreds of Muslims in suicide bombings. Al-Zarqawi, a Sunni Muslim, repeatedly attacked Shiite shrines and leaders in a bid to fuel an Iraqi civil war, instead of primarily fighting the U.S. military and its coalition partners. As a result, counterterrorism officials and analysts said, al- Zarqawi's al-Qaida in Iraq had become increasingly isolated and marginalized over the past year. "A number of al-Qaida figures were uncomfortable with the tactics he was using in Iraq," said Paul Wilkinson, director of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St. Andrew's in Scotland. "It was quite clear with Zarqawi that as far as the al-Qaida core leadership goes, they couldn't control the way in which their network affiliates operated." Al-Zarqawi gave a boost to the al-Qaida network by giving it a highly visible presence in Iraq at a time when its original leaders went into hiding or were killed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. He established al-Qaida's first military beachhead and training camps outside Afghanistan. He was also a master media strategist, using the Internet to post videotaped beheadings of hostages and claim responsibility for some of Iraq's deadliest suicide attacks, usually in the name of al-Qaida. Adding to al-Zarqawi's mystique was a $25 million reward the U.S. government offered for his capture. It is unclear which of al-Zarqawi's lieutenants, or deputy emirs, will attempt to fill his role. But whoever succeeds him will be hard-pressed to achieve the same level of notoriety or to unite the jihadists fighting in Iraq under a single command, analysts said. Some European and Arab intelligence officials said they had seen signs before al-Zarqawi's death that the number of foreign fighters going to Iraq was already waning. For recruitment efforts, the importance of al-Zarqawi's death "cannot be overestimated," Germany's foreign intelligence chief, Ernst Uhrlau, told the Berlin newspaper Taggespiegel. Guido Steinberg, an expert on Islamic radicalism at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin, said other groups of foreign fighters that kept a loose alliance with al-Zarqawi, such as Ansar al-Sunnah, might turn away from al-Qaida in Iraq now that he is gone. "It's a great loss for these jihadi networks," said Steinberg, who served as a counterterrorism adviser to former German chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. "I don't think there is any person in Iraq able to control this network the way Zarqawi did. It's very decentralized. He was the only person in Iraq who could provide the glue. "By losing Zarqawi, they run the danger of losing Iraq as a battlefield to the nationalist insurgents and others who aren't interested in bin Laden or the global jihad." For many years al-Zarqawi, 39, had an arm's-length relationship with al-Qaida. He met bin Laden in the late 1990s in Afghanistan, but the two clashed personally, according to Arab intelligence officials and former Islamic radicals. Al-Zarqawi did accept al-Qaida money to set up his own training camp in Afghanistan, they said, but he ran it independently. While bin Laden was preparing the Sept. 11 hijacking plot, al-Zarqawi was focused elsewhere, scheming to topple the Jordanian monarchy and attack Israel. After Sept. 11, with al-Qaida's leadership on the run from U.S. forces, al-Zarqawi and his fighters moved into Iran and later into Kurdish-controlled areas of northern Iraq. Al-Zarqawi maintained his independence at first. But after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, he played up his affiliation with al-Qaida's core leadership when it served his purposes, analysts said. He formally swore loyalty to bin Laden in October 2004 and changed the name of his Monotheism and Jihad network to al-Qaida in Iraq. Both sides benefited. By using the al-Qaida name, al-Zarqawi bolstered his legitimacy and attracted media attention, as well as money and recruits. In turn, al-Qaida leaders were able to brand a new franchise in Iraq and claim they were at the forefront of the fight to expel U.S. forces. But the relationship was fragile, and al-Zarqawi provoked the ire of al-Qaida's founders by focusing less on U.S. military targets and by killing or injuring thousands of Iraqi Shiites. In September 2005, U.S. intelligence officials said they had confiscated a long letter that al-Qaida's deputy leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had written to al-Zarqawi, bluntly warning that Muslim public opinion was turning against him. With al-Zarqawi gone, some analysts said bin Laden's allies would try to re-exert strategic influence over the remains of the al-Qaida network in Iraq. If al-Qaida fails to maintain a high-profile stake in the conflict with U.S. forces in the region, they said, its relevance in the jihadi movement would quickly diminish. Others said al-Zarqawi's death is likely to widen the factional splits within global jihad that have been developing for years.